We have received several complaints regarding hate speech on your website. Per our terms, “Content with the sole purpose of causing harm or inciting hate, or content that could be reasonably considered as slanderous or libelous.” is not permitted.

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You simply cannot imagine how utterly bored I am with your little vendetta. To chase me from ATW is, surprising.

I used the saying because it is famous and true. I actually paraphrased because although I do strongly believe in free speech, I personally would have difficulty fighting my way out of the proverbial wet paper bag. If something is true it stands the test of time. At least I didnt try to set it to supermarket music.

It occurs to me, belatedly as ever, that some might actually believe my comment referred to something other than you being banned from ATW. Not so! I thought it was wrong at the time and hope a lesson has been learned.

Cheers Pip, although David does hypocrisy pretty well, as can be seen from the last few weeks, I doubt he’ll reconsider lifting my ban. Unfortunate as ATW contains quite a few decent sorts, but in any event, twas quite illuminating to see David’s reaction to a comment I made here (which he didn’t deny), as it seems to have cut close. But any time you see Mr Vance wave the freedom of speech flag, we know that he means it for those he agrees with. I recall him on Hearts and Minds supporting the right of Nick Griffin to airtime on Question Time a while back whilst saying that shinners shouldn’t have the same right because they were terrorists. Of course that same rule doesn’t apply to his friend Anthony McIntyre

So David, did you enjoy the Elvis Costello gig then? The same Elvis Costello who recently refused to play in Israel due to its barbaric actions in Gaza. I’m surprised that someone with your integrity would pay good money to see a terrorist-appeasing Pali-loving anti-semitic scumbag/useful idiot!

Oliver’s army are here to stay…But they’ve had a slap on the wrist following the Saville report.

“Hong Kong is up for grabs London is full of arabas We could be in palestine Overrun by the chinese line With the boys from the mersey and the thames and the tyne But there’s no danger It’s a professional career Though it could be arranged With just a word in Mr. Churchill’s ear If you’re out of luck you’re out of work We could send you to johannesburg”

just click the cached versions, as the live links have disappeared for some reason 0o Mr Vance provides thoughts on gays on 27 of the first 30 posts, not that he’s gone a little littlejohn mind you, I’m sure his other bloggers had gays on their minds as much as david does, they just don’t seem to demonstrate it as much.

Blasphemy and blasphemous libel continue to be illegal under the common law of Northern Ireland. On 5 November 2009 in the House of Lords an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill was moved, which would have abolished these offences in Northern Ireland, but following a brief debate the amendment was withdrawn.

If the Anti Defamation League had got hold of some of the comments recently posted on here about the “zionists”, would they have been justified in calling Mick Fealty an anti-semite? Permitting homophobic or islamophobic comments on your blog is not necessarily proof that the blog-owner is also personally homophobic or islamophobic; that’s probably the argument Mr Vance’s solicitors would be making if you were ever to end up in court.

They might have a case O’Neill…. if Mick referred to Judaism as ‘a grotesque pathology’, but you don’t seem to be aware of Davids own self-authored threads.

One person’s right to free speech doesn’t cancel another person’s right to his good name, so a universal qualification on the privilege is that it doesn’t provide an entitlement to engage in defamation.

The EU, however, has qualified the right to free speech to prohibit free political speech, limiting the privilege to classes of political speech that the superstate approves of and independent of how the people thus qualified would choose to qualify their own freedoms if they retained the freedom to do so (which they don’t). That is very dangerous.

The US government, in contrast, cannot qualify a constitutional protection, so it citizens have fundamental protection from abuse of their rights by the state that EU citizens lack. The whole point of a constitution is that it serves to protect the citizens from the state. When the state can alter the constitution and thereby the rights of its citizens at its discretion then its citizens have no protection whatsoever.

That is the lamentable situation that EU citizens put themselves in when they surrendered their sovereignty to the EU, giving the EU constitution primacy over their own. If any of those nations now amended their own constitution to protect free political speech then the ECJ would strike down the amendment as being incompatible with EU law.

Thus, they have surrendered their right to free speech and must now simply do as their masters in the EU instruct them to do so it is pitiful to see folks think that their opinion about free speech is of any consequence when it stopped being of any consequence when they surrendered sovereignty over it.

Not having commented for some time, I felt that I should on this particular post.

I have had numerous differences with Mr Vance and highlighted on many occasions that I believed many of the posts on his site constituted incitement to racial and religious hatred and serve no other purpose and indeed, that was the sole intent of making these posts. Other posts expressed legitmate political points of view and with these no reasonable person could have an issue.

However…

Proving intent is a notoriously difficult thing to do in legal terms and I note that, as little has changed since 2005-6, when I first posted here and was bullied by this man into providing him with my name and address so he could allegedly sue me for expressing my views. Needless to say, I did not. I see nothing has changed – as with his response to “Big Maggie” above.

This is not an issue of freedom of speech, unless you believe that in a democracy we should allow someone to shout abuse at the funerals of murder victims, revel pubicly in the deaths of innocent women and children and expect ordinary people to acccept that sort of action as the price of living in a free society. You do not have freedom if you use that freedom to explicitly degrade and argue for the removal of human rights from others.

On many many occasions, this mans site has set out deliberately to hurt and abuse those who have had family members killed or injured, both here in NI and further afield. No perspectives of interest or value or a meaningful contribution to human understanding has yet been articulated – and yet this man expresses surprise that the new MP for East Belfast declined to shake his hand….

The elecorate of East Belfast might note the relief expressed on the website that, on defeat, Vance did not again have to make the apparently onerous journey from Donaghcloney to East Belfast. I think it legitimate to ask what did he expect to have to do, had he been successful? Shoul he decide ever again to stand in this area (to which he is a stranger) the would be eletors might note the reluctance..

Thankfully he was not elected – and never will be. Never again will he be able to claim his website is not a “hate site.” It is.

David Vance has no understanding of peace making, and conflict resolution, both here in NI and in the middle-east.

A great many posts and comments on his site are both inflammatory and inciteful to religious and racial hatred.

So its right he’s been picked up on it and shown a yellow card.

His friendship with McCann is constantly getting him into hot water and will be the ruin of the man, unless he takes steps to curtail the offensive little bigot.

I do feel that posters like Henry94 have a calming influence on DV, their patience and virtue is leading the man , albeit “kicking and screaming” into the beatific ways of tolerance peace and understanding.

David Vance has a particular political viewpoint but it must be remembered that he also has a constituency, in that even within East Belfast close to eighteen hundred people knew exactly what this was and this did not in any way render him unsuitable in his voters eyes from representing them.

Neither is David just a voice in the wilderness; I have heard some blunt and what could be considered racist comments etc in left, middle and right wing political circles across the water. I get Country Life, the bible of Rural Middle England every week : the current issue has over one hundred and twenty pages.

There is one photo of an all black cast of a play, there are two black people in a group photo of fifty circus performers and there is one young colored student included in a college ad and that is it for the entire magazine from over sixty photos or graphics of people carried. This is not the real England racial mix that I know, but it is a pretend England that all the readers can be reassured with.

Aside from his East Belfast 1, 800 David Vance do speak for a certain segment of the population in these islands and wishing it away or ignoring it is not going to make it go away. At least he is prepared to debate the issues unlike his colleague Turgon who have stated his intention to use this site to carry on ‘war with words’ and drive his perceived opponents off the field !

Since views such as Davids exist and are not going away is it not better then that they are debated and countered in this way? I have been the victim of censorship for over twenty-five years of my life, State censorship I could deal with, in a way that was a compliment !

However I also see first hand how insidious censorship was in that I had literary works rejected, not on merit ( as some judges informed me off the record ) but because any award to me would result in a grant loss by that festival committee the following year. Human nature being what it is all erred on the side of caution resulting in a double censorship, exactly as the authorities had intended!

Obviously there are conflicts between freedom of expression and the common good that must be exercised, just as slugger has rules of debate. It may be very satisfying for the Politically Correct Brigade to run David Vance off the site and over the nearest hill but it is not doing too much for democracy or freedom of expression!